


Like an Oversized Duckling

by cordsycords



Series: lies you tell your friends to prevent them from figuring out your depressing d&d backstory [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 02 (Critical Role), First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 20:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13395912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordsycords/pseuds/cordsycords
Summary: or how molly almost dies, and gains a new companion in the process





	Like an Oversized Duckling

He comes to through a haze of pain and confusion, pain from the stomach wound, and confusion from that fact that he’s pretty sure he’s not dead, given the fact that he highly doubts he’s going to a place with a sunrise and the smell of cooking meat when he finally bites it. 

 

Before he opens his eyes, he takes a second to take in as many of his surroundings as he can.

 

He can feel the velvet of his coat underneath him. There’re bandages wrapped tightly around where the harpy’s claws had dug into his stomach. Whoever picked him had fixed his wound, and was kind enough to make him comfortable. He figures he should be polite to whoever had saved him, so he opens his eyes and moves to get up. As soon as he gets his first arm under him to sit, pain shoots up from his stomach and suddenly he’s back on the ground again, panting as he works from the pain.

 

“Stay down, wound’s still bleeding,” someone from outside his vision says. The voice is deep, but it sounds like a woman.

 

More careful now, he just lifts his head up so he can see where the voice had come from. Across from him, a large, raggedy-looking girl sits cross-legged on the ground. Her hair is a mess, long and matted with a couple twigs sticking out of the tangled nest. She’s sloppily eating what looks to be the leg of a bird. He can hear the bones crunch under her teeth.

 

“Mighty thanks for the healing, friend, but I find myself wondering how you found me.”

 

She shrugs her shoulders, “Found you in the woods.”

 

“We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

 

“Guess you’re lucky then.”

 

He lets his head fall back against the ground with a huff. The rising sun forces him to squint his eyes against its blinding light.

 

“Couldn’t have found a more comfortable place to stay?”

 

“No.”

 

He huffs. She really isn’t cooperating, “You don’t talk much, do you?”

 

“No.”

 

He sighs, closing his eyes, resigning himself to rest. It doesn’t take him long to fall under once more. Just as he steps over the edge, he feels a weak trickling of healing magic flow through his body, pushing him into darkness.

 

 

 

It takes three more days of slow healing for him to be able to move properly. He doesn’t know  _how_  she’s doing it, but he’s pretty she’s been healing him as he sleeps.

 

He’s sitting on the ground, coat wrapped around his shoulders to shield him from the chill. His deck of cards shuffles between his hands as he practices his craft. His new “friend” has been gone for two hours now. She had left without a word, and he doesn’t know if/when he should expect her to return. 

 

She gave little information about herself. By the second day with her, he had discovered her name, Yasha, which gave no clue to her origins much like his own name. Most “conversations” that they had involved him talking and her staying stoically silent to the point where he was really just talking to himself.

 

At this point, he could have just  _left_. Go back to the town he got his contract from a collect however much of the reward he could. But she was intriguing. And she was feeding him.

 

He hears her stomping through the brush before he sees her approach. Everything about her is blundering and abrupt, from the way she talks, to how she stalks around their meagre campground. When she pushes into the small clearing, he sees three dead squirrels hanging around her neck.

 

She prepares them in silence, skinning them with what appears to be a rock that she’s shaped into a knife. He continues to shuffle his cards, watching her work.

 

“Why are you doing that?” She asks out of the blue, stopping her work.

 

“Doing what?” He asks, looking up at her while he continues to shuffle. She nods at his hands, then looks back up at him, “Practice.”

 

“For what?”

 

“I tell fortunes,” with a flourish he pulls a card from the deck and shows it to her. If he’s done it right (and he always does) there’s a picture of a nude woman descending from the heavens, a pair of albatross wings extended from her back: the Angel.

 

Yasha’s looks to be taken aback for a second, but quickly regains her composure, “How do you know?”

 

“I know nothing, dear friend, I’m merely a channel for the fates to flow through. I don’t know what they say, I just interpret them,” he tells her.

 

She lifts an eyebrow, “Bullshit.”

 

Not getting anything past her, then.

 

He goes back to shuffling his cards.

 

 

 

He doesn’t know how he got a wild aasimar girl to follow him around, but he’s glad that she is once he returns to the town he got his original contract in.

 

It took another two days for him to heal completely, and when he thanked her and said it was time to go their separate ways, she just ignored him. For three days she silently followed him, like an oversized duckling too attached to its mother with a tendency towards murdering squirrels.

 

The town he started in sits just at the edge of the forest. When he had first arrived people looked at him strangely, and there even more suspicious now that he has Yasha in tow.

 

He heads to the tavern first, pushing open the doors to find it almost empty. he still manages to turn the heads of the people there as he saunters over to the bar, one hand sitting on the hilt of a scimitar.

 

“Hmph, thought you were dead,” the barman says, not even looking up from the tankard he’s polishing.

 

 _Hoping_  he was dead, more like it.

 

“Me too, friend,” Molly greets, leaning against the bar, “But I’m back. And I’d like my money if you please.”

 

The barman glances over to him for a second, then goes back to his polishing, “Don’t see a trophy, master blood hunter.”

 

“What?”

 

“That’s how this works,  _friend._  No trophy, no payment.”

 

“Hey, I killed your bloody harpies, d’you I got mauled by a bunny rabbit?” Molly retorts, gesturing down to the bloodied bandages that are still wrapped around his scarred torso in lieu of a shirt.

 

The barman chuckles, “Don’t think I haven’t seen that stint before. You blood hunters all have a death wish.”

 

He’s about to do something stupid before Yasha suddenly steps up next to him, slamming her fist down onto the bar. The barman stops what he’s doing, and slowly looks up to see the angry aasimar glaring at him, her different-coloured eyes unblinking in her rage.

 

“You will give my friend what he is owed,” she states. The barman stands there, petrified as she reaches a hand down to pull a pouch from her belt. She empties its contents onto the bar: twelve harpy feathers, twenty claws, a beak, and even an eyeball rolls out of the rough piece of leather.

 

The barman reaches under the bar and then throws a sack of coin onto the bar. Its contents jingle as the coin purse hits the wood.

 

“A hundred gold pieces, as agreed. Now get outa here. And don’t come back.”

 

“Gladly,” Molly grabs the purse and turns to leave. Yasha follows, keeping pace directly behind his shoulder.

 

He doesn’t know what she wants - if she wants anything at all - but he’ll take whatever help she’s willing to give.

**Author's Note:**

> We know absolutely nothing about these characters. Why am I doing this?


End file.
